The Deconstruction and Repeal of the Second Amendment
There is a growing chorus of leftist calls to amend the 2A until they can rally enough populist support to fully repeal it.
“I ask, Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people…” —George Mason (1788)
“A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” —Article Two, Bill of Rights
Article Two (the Second Amendment) was written as a proscription against government intrusion upon and usurpation of the Natural Rights of Man, because “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” is the most formidable line of defense against government intrusion on those rights.
Indeed, this inherent right is the first civil right — the fundamental guarantor of all others — as affirmed by our Founders.
In fact, the first shots of the eight-year struggle for American independence, fired at Lexington and Concord, were in response to the British government’s attempt to disarm “the People.”
It was understood then, as now, that the inherent right to self-defense was irrevocable — and not to be infringed. It was and remains the most fundamental of the unalienable Rights of Man — the rights of all people.
After the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, during the 1788 Massachusetts Convention debates for ratification of the U.S. Constitution, Samuel Adams proclaimed, “The said Constitution shall never be construed … to prevent the People of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” Other states provided similar assurances in their constitutions, based on common law.
Once our Constitution was ratified, the debate over the addition of a “Bill of Rights,” including the Second Amendment right to self-defense, was hotly contested. Many of our Founders argued that the mere reiteration of these innate and unalienable Rights of Mankind within the Constitution might imply that they are somehow subject to amendment, as if granted to the people by the state rather than inherent as “endowed by their Creator.”
Typical of those objections was this from Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 84: “Bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?”
In his first Bill of Rights draft, James Madison proposed what would become the Second Amendment. This was a concession to the Anti-Federalists, who insisted upon the enumeration of these specific Liberties in the Constitution, much to the objection of the Federalists, who believed this might imply to future generations that those inherent rights were subject to amendment.
Given the preeminent status of the Second Amendment and the growing chorus of leftists calling to amend it until they can rally enough populist support to fully repeal it, we should be clear that our Founders never intended for this right to be infringed. And we should be equally clear about what our Founders intended to convey with each clause: “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State,” and “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”
The reference to “a well regulated militia” has been a subject of some popular dispute.
Do these words refer to a standing army as some suggest — a national body of armed forces necessary for the safety and security of the nation, but which could be a potential threat to its citizens under the control of an oppressive regime?
While the militia reference is not to a standing army, it’s clear that our Founders had a uniform concern for such military bodies. At the Constitutional Convention, Madison said: “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to Liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”
In Madison’s Federalist Number 46, he declares that the Constitution should be ratified despite fears of a standing army, because Americans are armed, and because they are also organized into state militias not controlled by the proposed federal government.
According to Madison: “Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”
Madison also observed, prophetically, that in Europe, “the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” (I note “prophetically” because the inability of Europeans to defend themselves against the tyrannical socialist dictatorships of both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin resulted in the deaths of more than 35 million European civilians.)
More specifically, as Noah Webster wrote in 1787: “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.”
“A people can never be deprived of their liberties,” Webster insisted, “while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.”
Despite this fundamental truth, there exists a cynical and malicious argument for undermining the Second Amendment. This argument is made by historical revisionists who insist that because “a well regulated militia” refers to a state militia (or guard), it only authorizes “the people to keep and bear Arms” in their capacity as members of such militias.
The Second Amendment, however, has two clauses, just as it has two purposes. The first affirms the advantage of “a well regulated militia.” The second affirms the “right of the people” (not state militias) “to keep and bear Arms.” Thus, the second does not limit or restrict the right “to keep and bear Arms” to militias, but rather affirms the “right of the people” to do so.
Regarding the Second Amendment’s linguistic construction, writer and constitutional researcher Neil Schulman set himself to the task of clearing up the popular confusion that statists in the Democrat Party seek to sow about what the Second Amendment actually affirms.
First, he found one of the nation’s leading academic experts on American language usage, Roy Copperud, a distinguished professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, and the author of American Usage and Style: The Consensus. At the time, he was a member of The American Heritage Dictionary’s usage panel and cited by Merriam Webster’s Usage Dictionary as an renowned expert.
Schulman then asked Professor Copperud to clarify what rights the Second Amendment actually specifies.
Schulman’s first question: “The debate over this amendment has been whether the first part of the sentence, ‘A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State,’ is a restrictive clause or a subordinate clause, with respect to the independent clause containing the subject of the sentence, ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.’ I would request that your analysis of this sentence not take into consideration issues of political impact or public policy, but be restricted entirely to a linguistic analysis of its meaning and intent. Further, since your professional analysis will likely become part of litigation regarding the consequences of the Second Amendment, I ask that whatever analysis you make be a professional opinion that you would be willing to stand behind with your reputation, and even be willing to testify under oath to support, if necessary.”
Schulman: “Can the sentence be interpreted to grant the right to keep and bear arms solely to ‘a well regulated militia’?”
Copperud: “The sentence does not restrict the right to keep and bear arms, nor does it state or imply possession of the right elsewhere or by others than the people; it simply makes a positive statement with respect to a right of the people.”
Schulman: “Is ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms’ granted by the words of the Second Amendment, or does the Second Amendment assume a preexisting right of the people to keep and bear arms, and merely state that such right ‘shall not be infringed’?”
Copperud: “The right is not granted by the amendment; its existence is assumed. The thrust of the sentence is that the right shall be preserved inviolate for the sake of ensuring a militia.”
Schulman: “Is ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms’ conditioned upon whether or not a well regulated militia, is, in fact, necessary to the security of a free State? And if that condition is not existing, is the statement ‘the right of the People to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed’ null and void?”
Copperud: “No such condition is expressed or implied. The right to keep and bear arms is not said by the amendment to depend on the existence of a militia. No condition is stated or implied as to the relation of the right to keep and bear arms and to the necessity of a well-regulated militia as a requisite to the security of a free state. The right to keep and bear arms is deemed unconditional by the entire sentence.”
Schulman: “Does the clause ‘A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State,’ grant a right to the government to place conditions on the ‘right of the people to keep and bear Arms,’ or is such right deemed unconditional by the meaning of the entire sentence?”
Copperud: “The right is assumed to exist and to be unconditional, as previously stated. It is invoked here specifically for the sake of the militia.”
Schulman: “Which of the following does the phrase ‘well regulated Militia’ mean: ‘well-equipped’, ‘well-organized,’ ‘well-drilled,’ ‘well-educated,’ or ‘subject to regulations of a superior authority’?”
Copperud: “The phrase means ‘subject to regulations of a superior authority;’ this accords with the desire of the writers for civilian control over the military.”
Schulman: “If at all possible, I would ask you to take account the changed meanings of words, or usage, since that sentence was written [in 1789], but not take into account historical interpretations of the intents of the authors, unless those issues can be clearly separated.”
Copperud: “To the best of my knowledge, there has been no change in the meaning of words or in usage that would affect the meaning of the amendment. If it were written today, it might be put: ‘Since a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged.’”
Schulman: “As a ‘scientific control’ on this analysis, I would also appreciate it if you could compare your analysis of the text of the Second Amendment to the following sentence: ‘A well-schooled electorate being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read Books shall not be infringed.’
"My questions for the usage analysis of this sentence would be,
”(1) Is the grammatical structure and usage of this sentence and the way the words modify each other identical to the Second Amendment’s sentence?; and
“(2) Could this sentence be interpreted to restrict ‘the right of the people to keep and read Books’ only to ‘a well-educated electorate’ — for example, registered voters with a high-school diploma?”
Copperud: “(1) Your ‘scientific control’ sentence precisely parallels the amendment in grammatical structure. (2) There is nothing in your sentence that either indicates or implies the possibility of a restricted interpretation.”
To sum up Professor Copperud’s answers, in the context of the debates about the Bill of Rights, our Founders believed that both the establishment of militias and the individual right to keep and bear arms were vital to the future of Liberty. Thus, the Second Amendment affirms two rights, much as the First Amendment affirms five rights — religion, speech, press, assembly and petition of the government.
Moreover, in the context at the time of the framing, “well regulated” meant orderly, much as it did in common references to “well regulated government” and “well regulated families.”
It was also generally understood that “militia” was a reference to the whole body of “the People,” though state militias were generally limited to able-bodied men.
George Mason, whose Virginia Bill of Rights was the inspiration for our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, noted in the ratification debates, “I ask, Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people…” He noted as well that to disarm the people “was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
Virginia statesman Richard Henry Lee wrote, “To preserve Liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”
Likewise during the ratification debates, Patrick Henry declared: “The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun. … Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?”
Our Founders agreed and articulated repeatedly that the inherent “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” was the most dependable assurance of preserving Liberty.
In his magisterial Commentaries on the Constitution (1833), Justice Joseph Story, appointed to the Supreme Court by James Madison, affirmed the preeminence of the Second Amendment: “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium [safeguard] of the Liberties of a Republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of the rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the People to resist and triumph over them.”
Jefferson asked rhetorically: “What country can preserve its liberties, if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”
“If the representatives of the people betray their constituents,” Alexander Hamilton observed, “there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.” He added, “Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped.”
Historically, there have been no successful attempts to modify the Second Amendment’s assurance of the innate rights of the people to defend their Liberty, but there are now threats to do so. That is precisely why in the debates over ratification of the Bill of Rights, as previously noted, many of our Founders expressed concern that the enumeration of such rights might imply to future generations that they were subject to amendment.
That notwithstanding, Second Amendment rights have most certainly been subject to much alteration by judicial misinterpretation and outright activism.
Given the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Democrat Party leadership’s effort to redefine “militia” as something other than “the People,” there is now a new rationale for repealing the Second Amendment.
That argument is this: At the time the Second Amendment was ratified, the most sophisticated weapon was a flintlock — a far less deadly weapon than the “black assault rifles” used in the extremely rare but high-profile mass murders today, which Democrats exploit as political fodder in order to stir up their anti-2A constituents advocating repeal.
In my recent media forum debate with a wealthy suburban leftist after one such attack, he insisted, “If not repeal, I think the best solution would be to amend the Second Amendment so that the arms mentioned are limited to those from when the amendment was written. Then anyone who wanted could have a musket or a flintlock — nothing more.”
I responded, “Using your ‘logic,’ the First Amendment’s freedom of speech affirmation would apply to the town crier, and freedom of the press would apply to tabloid sheets printed by hand one at a time. And I might add, this debate would have to take place by letters written with a quill pen and delivered on horseback.”
As I anticipated, no response…
Finally, let’s review some pertinent data related to what the democrats call the “gun problem” in America.
1.If you don’t have a violent criminal record, and/or are not associated with the violent sociopathic thug, drug or gang subcultures, who commit the vast majority of crimes in America, your chances of being shot or killed by an assailant with a gun are almost as low as murder rates in Western Europe where gun ownership is outlawed. Oh, and in Switzerland, which has a higher concentration of “assault weapons” per capita than any nation in the world, the murder rate is one of the lowest in the world.
If you’re not involved in criminal activity, your statistical probability of being killed by a drunk driver is much higher than being murdered. (Oddly, no one is organizing marches to ban alcohol or automobiles.)
Despite all the “assault weapon” hysterics, according to the FBI’s latest annual crime statistics, rifles were used in 374 homicides, while knives were used in 1,604 homicides. But the rare high-profile attack at a school by a sociopath with a gun is a much more politically attractive anti-2A rallying point than gang-bangers murdering other gang-bangers in our inner cities.
In their zeal for deconstruction and repeal of the Second Amendment, Democrat Party leftists don’t want to discuss is that the deadliest ground in America are inner cities – those urban poverty centers which are Democrat-controlled strongholds, and have been for generations. The vast majority of those murders are black-on-black or black-on-hispanic. According to the latest FBI statistics, there are 46 people murdered in the U.S. every day – though it is notable that since Trump’s election, the murder rate is declining.
Violence is a cultural problem. “Gun control” is not the solution for ending systemic violence, but it most assuredly advances the Left’s insatiable quest for power and control. In fact, many urban Democrats have become gun owners, and an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found that Americans have an increasingly favorable view toward legal firearms for self-defense.
Until Democrats join Republicans in a unified effort to reverse the policies that have devastated our families and communities, violence will continue to rule the day. Violence in America is the direct result of failed statist policies, the effluent of their so-called centralized social programs, which have enslaved generations of poor Americans on urban poverty plantations in every major city nationwide.
Fact is, Democrats don’t care about children unless they can use their caskets as political props. If they did care about children, they wouldn’t promote the culture of death that each day kills 2,446 of the most vulnerable among us before birth.
When debating the Second Amendment, there are three points that are often neglected.
First, possession of firearms is a deterrent against countless millions of crimes, as made clear in studies of convicted felons, who tell researchers that they choose victims who are least likely to be able to defend themselves. Second, there are more than a million crimes thwarted every year by those who defend themselves with a firearm.
And finally, the Second Amendment is, first and foremost, about protection of our Constitution and the Liberty it enshrines. As I have oft noted, handguns are for personal and home defense. But semi-automatic rifles, mislabeled by Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists as “assault rifles,” are for protection of those who would infringe on the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.” If you find that notion unsettling, then you need to learn more about the history the constant assault of statist tyranny on Liberty.
And for the record, despite claims to the contrary, banning the sale of those guns has had dubious results in terms of reducing the rare but sensational use of such firearms by mass murderers.
Bottom Line: Statists in the executive, legislative and judicial branches, who favor a centralized socialist government, endeavor wherever possible to enfeeble and erode the Second Amendment. For in doing so, they move ever closer to their ultimate objective (and that of their uninformed constituents) — disarming the American people and demoting our constitutional standing as “citizens” to our ancestors’ standing as “subjects.”
“The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone. [T]he advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any…” –James Madison (1788)
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NOTES:
The First Civil Right is To Keep and Bear Arms. It is, as James Madison’s Supreme Court Justice, Joseph Story, rightly defined it, “the palladium of the liberties of the republic,” the ultimate assurance of all other rights.
What follows are a few key notes that all defenders of American Liberty and its foundational guarantor, the Second Amendment, should be prepared to articulate, in order to refute the rhetorical gun control agenda disinformation propagated by Democrats and their Leftmedia publicists.
While some of this data is based on annual findings, most of that data does not vary significantly year over year.
FOOTNOTE 1: Regarding so-called “gun violence,” there were approximately 19,600 homicides involving firearms in the U.S. in the latest year of record, which you can view state by state. Fortunately, there are indications that homicides may be declining after the significant surge of violence unleashed by Biden and his Democrat agitators in 2020. The 2022 homicide rate was 30% higher than in 2019.
The Demos ubiquitously and falsely label the generational murderous contagion they have seeded as “gun violence,” and they focus exclusively on the infrequent high-profile “mass shootings,” which account for only a tiny fraction of all homicides. More than 99% of murders in the U.S. are not the result of mass attacks. (Notably, guns don’t commit violence, thugs and sociopaths commit violence.) The oft-cited Gun Violence Archive defines a “mass shooting” as any incident that involves a “minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed.” The vast majority of those violent attacks are the result of drug and gang violence committed in Democrat-controlled urban centers.
In a country and culture that ignores the rising generation of sociopathic murderers — mostly thugs in violent urban centers who are saturated with cultural violence and indoctrinated with mass-media glorification of violence — it is fortunate that the incidence of mass murder is not 10 times higher. Arguably, the only thing keeping that number from being higher is that 125 million Americans are legal and responsible gun owners.
Democrats don’t focus on the vast majority of murders, particularly the epidemic of black-on-black murders on their decaying urban poverty plantations, because they want to avoid the “inconvenient truth” about race and violence, which is the direct result of failed Democrat social programs. In fact, black people (13% of the population), are 12 times more likely to be murdered, per capita, than white people (62% of the population).
That gross racial disparity in murder rates isn’t useful for the gun control narrative Democrats invoke to evoke emotional reaction from mostly wealthy white suburban women, who form the Demos’ largest voter constituency.
FOOTNOTE 2: Regarding so-called “mass shootings,” for the record, murders of multiple people by one assailant are very rare in our nation of 335 million people. Less than 1% of all murders nationwide are classified as “mass shootings” and high-profile attacks, such as the 2017 mass murder in Las Vegas, are extremely rare.
The FBI defines “active shooter incidents” as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” In 2022, the FBI reported 50 incidents resulting in 313 casualties (100 killed and 213 wounded). That number was up significantly from 2020 when the FBI reported 40 incidents resulting in 164 casualties (38 killed and 126 wounded).
A broader record of “mass shooting” data is maintained by the Associated Press and Northeastern University, which uses the Department of Justice definition of mass public shooting: “A multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms.” These numbers fluctuate significantly year over year, and they range between 20 and 40 incidents. But notably, over the last 30 years, the number of black mass assailants is almost as high as the number of white assailants.
Democrats focus on these rare instances of multiple murders because these high-profile tragedies are political fodder to foment fear — most notably when they can toss out their oft-repeated but erroneous claim that “gun violence is the leading cause of death for children.” If by “children” they mean gang and drug-associated murders of those primarily between the ages of 16 and 21, then yes. Democrats are experts at fomenting fear and division.
The fear and angst Demos intentionally propagate are taking a toll on Americans’ mental health. Psychological researcher Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson observes: “Watching it time and time again on your phone or on the headlines can really impact you in ways that I don’t think we knew before to be as impactful. It’s so ‘in our face’ all the time and we have access to so much footage, so many pictures, so many videos, so many accounts that we’re ingesting it in ways that’s really unhealthy for us.” The result for many mothers, in particular, is an irrational fear that their children will be shot. That is precisely the fabricated fear Democrats want to perpetuate, especially among their female constituents, in order to advance their gun control agenda.
But here is a fact Democrats and their mainstream media platforms will not tell you about those rare high-profile shootings on school campuses: Young people between the ages of 6 and 22 are far safer on a campus than they are off campus.
(Notably, the deadliest school assault in American history did not involve a firearm. A sociopathic school board member in Bath, Michigan detonated a bomb outside an elementary school, murdering 38 children and six adults.)
FOOTNOTE 3: Regarding what Democrats and their Leftmedia publicists ubiquitously and falsely label “assault weapons,” an actual assault weapon, commonly known as a “machine gun,” is select-fire and can rapidly cycle rounds in fully automatic sequence. Very few select-fire weapons are in civilian hands, and only then subject to stringent licensing requirements.
In fact, civilian firearms in common use, like the AR-15 and other semiautomatic sporting and hunting rifles, are not “assault rifles.”
For much the same reason the Demo/Media talkingheads focus only on rare high-profile “mass shootings” to generate fear and angst, they also call semi-automatic rifles sometimes used in those attacks, “assault weapons.” Predictably, Demos then call for what Hillary Clinton framed decades ago as “common sense gun laws,” inevitably followed by calls for an “assault weapons ban.”
In 1994, Bill Clinton banned the sale of “military-style assault weapons,” but that ban was not renewed 10 years later because it was determined the ban had no effect on crime reduction. According to Rand Research, “We found no qualifying studies showing that bans on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines decreased any of the eight outcomes we investigated.”
The fact is, rifles and shotguns combined are used in less than 3% of all homicides, but Democrats never let facts get in the way of their “assault weapon ban” political agenda.
Both the Clintons were prolific prevaricators, masterful obfuscators of the truth. And Joe Biden has followed their template, establishing himself as the standard bearer of the “lying dog-faced pony soldier” cavalry.
FOOTNOTE 4: Regarding firearms and violent crime, researcher John Lott reports, “Over 92% of violent crimes in America do not involve firearms.” Again, the only thing keeping that number from being much higher is that 125 million Americans are legal and responsible gun owners.
FOOTNOTE 5: Regarding firearms and suicide, almost 60% of all deaths involving firearms are suicide, most also involving drug or alcohol abuse. But the big numbers promoted in “gun violence” reports do not distinguish between murder and suicide, thus implying that homicide rates are much higher. And does this mean that Demo support for assisted suicide is in conflict with their support for gun control?
FOOTNOTE 6: Regarding alcohol versus firearm deaths, if Democrats are serious about protecting Americans, they should outlaw alcohol. Alcohol abuse is far more deadly than firearm abuse. More than 178,000 people died from alcohol abuse last year — that’s NINE times the number of homicides associated with firearms. Drunk drivers are responsible for 37 deaths per day. And notably, it is estimated that alcohol is a key factor in at least 30% of homicides where the assailant uses a firearm. (Include drug dealing or use as a factor and that number jumps to about 60%.)
Of course, the vast majority of alcohol users possess and use it legally and responsibly. Likewise, the vast majority of firearm owners possess and use them legally and responsibly. Enacting a prohibition on firearms is tantamount to enacting a prohibition on alcohol. In both cases, only law-abiding users obey the laws.
BOTTOM LINE: Let me restate this point — only law-abiding citizens abide by the law. Only outlaws perpetrate acts of violence. Making good people helpless won’t make bad people harmless.
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
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